The Rain, the Park, and Other Things
by kingfisherwings
Summary: Dean hadn't expected to run into anyone in a closed park at two in the morning on a Wednesday, in the rain. But here was this woman, apparently crazier than he was.
1. Chapter 1

The park was weird at night - the fountains turned off, no people running around in them, the silence so huge that everything he did sounded five times as loud as it did in daylight, so he felt compelled to do it five times as quietly. And it was raining. Perfect, in other words, to contain his mood.

Dean had spent most of his time off bottled up in his apartment and thinking about trust. Mostly about how much it was stupid, futile, and sucked. They'd spent a long time convincing him he could trust them - that he _should_ - had Seth and Roman. And where had that gotten him, when they'd finally talked him into it? Sure, it had been good for a while having someone to run with, even great sometimes. And then Seth had stabbed him in the back - followed immediately by chairing him in the back a couple dozen times - and now Roman was putting distance in between them just as fast as he could pull it off.

Conclusion: He was alone again, with a beating he wouldn't have had to take in the plus column for his trouble. "Trusting people is bullshit."

"Oh, I don't know. I haven't whipped out my handy can of pepper spray, have I?"

He only jumped about a foot. He hadn't expected to run into anyone in a closed park at two in the morning on a Wednesday, in the rain. But here was this woman, apparently crazier than he was.

He couldn't actually see her in any complete kind of way - just a slice of fair-skinned face under an umbrella she'd somehow jammed into the slats of the bench she was sitting on, an equally pale hand, and under it, what looked like the top of a big spiral-bound sketch pad.

"Sorry," she said, sounding amused. "I really didn't mean to scare you. You looked so lost in thought, I didn't want to say anything."

"You were watching me?"

"From over by the labyrinth."

So, for five minutes, maybe a little more. "What are you doing here at this time of night?"

She held up what looked like a chunky pencil. "Drawing."

"What do you draw at two in the morning?"

"What's there at two in the afternoon but isn't now." She held up the pad. He had to get closer to see what was on it.

She'd drawn the fountain, leaping with water as it would be in daylight, five shadowy figures playing on the other side of the streams. "I came and looked at it during the day last week. When I'm done, I'll come back and look again, see how I did."

"But it'll be different, won't it? People in different places, the light not the same, all that."

She sounded pleased; he wasn't sure how he knew that, but he did. "That's how I'll know how well I caught it."

"Do you mind if I sit down?"

"Are you a murderer, a mugger, a rapist, or a degenerate?"

"Damn, and I almost got to sit down, too."

She laughed softly. "It was a trick question. I only let degenerates sit on my bench with me."

"It oughta be full, then, this time of night." He sat by her, trying to catch the edge of the umbrella's shelter. He was pretty damn wet now that he was out from under the trees.

"I'll turn it if you tell me why trusting people is bullshit."

"Because people aren't worth trusting."

"And here you are wanting to share my umbrella." She'd zipped the sketch pad into a waterproof case of some kind, and was tilting the umbrella to give him a little more of its benefit. He got a better look at her, finally: 25, maybe; blue eyes, brown hair half-ass held back with a clip, a scattering of freckles over her cheeks. Cute. Fuckable, definitely. And there was a thought...

"There's different kinds of trust, right? You're trusting me not to hurt you, and I'm not gonna."

"Who did you trust not to hurt you? You know, the other way?"

He laughed. He could hear how jagged it sounded even in his own ears. "Friends. _Brothers_, they said. Yeah."

"I'm sorry. The ones you pick are the worst, aren't they? At least with family, you didn't have any choice in the thing. They were already there when you were born."

"Yeah. Not only did they screw me over, I fucked up enough to let them, too."

"And now never again, right?"

"Yeah, that's about it."

"That's a horrible way to live."

"What do _you_ know about it?"

"More than you know about why I do."

"Yeah. Sorry."

"It's all right. But that doesn't change it: Living like that sucks."

"You decided that?"

"Yeah. I really do have pepper spray, you know. But I decided to trust you."

"Why?"

"Because you looked unhappy, not like you had mugging on your mind."

"Yeah, I guess I needed the company. I could use some more."

He thought the look that flashed through her eyes was disappointment. "I don't put out for strangers. Even sad ones." She stood up.

"Look, you don't have to go. I just thought maybe..."

"No, I'd better." She reached out, the movement unexpectedly quick, and rested her fingertips on his arm. "Don't let other people drain all the good stuff out of life for you. You don't owe anyone that." She darted off through the rain, holding the case she'd put her pad in over her head.

He looked down where she'd touched him. She'd left a streak of silvery-gray chalk on his skin.

And her umbrella still over him.


	2. Chapter 2

It was raining again. Of course. Hey, maybe the crazy chick would be there again.

Dean had gotten into the habit of walking in the park at night. It felt kind of like he was alone in the world, and that still suited his mood just fine. He hadn't seen artist-girl again, but he hadn't really been expecting to - never mind that he brought her umbrella with him every time, and felt pretty stupid carrying it under clear skies, too. Tonight he actually needed it. It was coming down pretty good; even the trees weren't much protection.

She was there. Same bench, same setup, different umbrella.

"You only come out when it rains?"

"I'm a hyad."

"A who?"

She smiled and flipped to a clean page. About two minutes later, she tore off the page and handed it to him.

He sat down, trying to catch the light from the nearby lamp fully on the page. It was the first really good look he'd had at something she drew. Not that he was a critic or anything, but it looked good to him, really good. It was raining in the drawing, courtesy of a bunch of little silvery streaks and dashes running diagonally over the paper. The longer he looked, the more it seemed like the rain formed the shapes of three female figures, very curvy, maybe naked, a big one in front and two smaller ones behind. She'd written things in the two bottom corners: _Hyades - AHG_ in one, and _C. Montag_ in the other.

"Okay, what's AHG?"

"All Hail Google."

"Which is how I find out what a hy-whatever is, right?"

"Right."

"And what's the C stand for?"

"My first name."

"What? No shit? Do I have to Google that, too?"

"I'm not famous enough for that to accomplish much. You tell me yours first and I'll think about telling you mine."

"Dean. All right, I showed you mine, you know what that means."

She struck a mock-thinking pose. "Clarisse." She shot him a warning look. "One Hannibal Lecter imitation - just one - and I swear you'll never see me again."

"If I do a really _good_ imitation, no one will." He decided to skip the obvious joke about eating her; it was his policy not to get shot down by the same chick more than once a month.

She smiled; something about it said she knew he'd at least thought about the joke. "Feeling any better about people at large?"

"Nah, not so much."

"It does get better, you know. Everything does. Except death. I've never seen anyone improve much after that."

"Everything, huh?"

"_Everything_." She looked at him for a long time, like she was taking the measure of something in his eyes. She twisted around abruptly so her ribcage was facing him and lifted the side of her shirt up to the band of her bra. A scar curved around her ribs from her back to the bottom of the bra, where it disappeared underneath.

"That's from a knife."

She nodded. "And the knife was from my ex." She tucked her shirt back in. "So I guess we're both right. People suck, and everything gets better."

"He tried to gut you."

"He came pretty close, too."

He didn't want another walk-out, but he suddenly wanted to know something enough to risk it. "Have you been with anyone since he gave you that?"

"No. You're the first person without a medical degree to see it. Congratulations. Unless you _do_ have a medical degree, of course."

"No, definitely not."

"You don't look like a doctor. _Or_ a psychologist." The warning was in her tone, impossible to miss.

"All right. 'There's the line, Dean. Fuck off back across it.'."

"I don't mean it like that. But we're supposed to be picking apart _your_ attitude toward people here, right? I know all about mine."

"Sure, but what will we do when _that_ 30 seconds is up?"

She smiled again; that pleased him.

"What were you working on when I got here?"

She flipped the page back and handed the pad to him. "The fountain again. I wasn't happy with how I did. I didn't keep enough of it."

"Keep?"

"Here." She tapped her temple. "Look, leave, come back when it's all different and try to get it out of your head and on paper. Water's really hard to do that with. It never stops changing." She tucked her feet up in front of her on the bench. "Have you ever thought about that we can't ever see the present?"

"Don't you mean the future?"

"That, yeah, but the present, too. Think about it: Your eyes pick up an image, like of my lips saying the word 'image.' It goes up your optic nerve to your brain, and your brain registers it, and _that's_ when you see. It's only a microsecond or two, but by the time you see me saying 'image,' I'm really already saying 'like'."

He thought about it, watching the wind shake the leaves on the tree across from the bench - or watching when the wind _shook_ them. The whole thing made his brain ache. _Yeah, my next match is going to be fun now. Thanks, babe._

She smiled, a definite touch of imp in it, and got up. "Whatever you do, don't watch your feet while you walk home."

She took the umbrella he'd brought back. She left the one she'd been using.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean wanted to kick himself for being so easily driven, but he looked up the word he'd been assigned. After he did, he liked Clarisse's drawing even better than he already did; it was somehow exactly what he imagined a rain nymph would look like, even though he'd never imagined one until now. Which, he guessed, was what made her an artist.

He tried not to admit to himself that he was waiting for rain. But he was. His heart dropped into his gut when he saw she wasn't on the degenerate bench.

She'd left a note, tucked in a plastic bag and wedged between the slats: _Labyrinth. C._

_She wants me to find her._ The thought made him the happiest he'd been in a couple weeks, no competition.

He wasn't sure what the hell this labyrinth thing was _for_. It wasn't a maze; there was one way in and out. The hedges were only about three inches tall yet, anyway. He could see Clarisse sitting in the center long before he got there. With no place for an umbrella, she wasn't drawing. He walked across the goofy thing, stepping over the future hedges as he went.

She was laughing when he got to the round stone that served as an arty bench in the middle. It was closer quarters than a regular bench, but she didn't seem worried about it when he sat down. "You'd have been right in there with Alexander, wouldn't you? 'A _knot_? Where the fuck's my sword?'. You found my note."

"Yeah. Done with the fountain?"

"I'm happy with the third try, yeah. I'm not sure what's next, but no more fountains for a while."

He told her, tentatively, about her defining an idea in his head that he'd never had there before. She beamed. "I think that might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. There's a story I like a lot that talks about that. It's really, really funny, but it's also about Hell. One of the characters says that Dante is responsible for Hell being what it is. The _idea_ existed before him, of course, but no images. He created those. And that's true; most of our imagery of Hell comes from _The Inferno_. He made a _reality_. That's art."

"And a hell of a lot to shoot for. Pun intended."

She smiled at him again. "Why aim low? Dante's been dead 800 years, and we're sitting here talking about him. _That's_ something to shoot for."

"Freakin' immortality. And artists aren't supposed to be ambitious."

"Oh, we are. It's just not what most people think of as ambition." She pulled the clip out of her hair and pushed it back; it was wet enough to stay put.

Maybe it was her ambition to be permanently damp, he thought. "Ever thought about coming out here when it's _not_ raining?"

"Didn't you Google?"

"I did. So it has to be raining, or you magically can't be here?"

"Nope. I bring it with me. It's one of the four great mysteries of life."

"What are the other three?"

"The chicken and the egg, why are people dumb enough to think we had the technology in the 60s to fake the moon landing but not to actually land on the damn thing, and how exactly _does_ one Wang Chung tonight?"

He laughed hard enough he almost fell off the damn rock. "You really live in some world I don't, you know that? Where do you come from, anyway?"

"Levant, North Dakota."

"Really? They have a lot of rain nymphs there?"

"Nine of us. You should see the spring floods."

He suddenly wanted to kiss her, to find out what the rain on her lips tasted like. But that would probably earn him another hasty retreat. She was different that way, too. "Are we still strangers?"

"Yes, we are. But we're making progress. Are you?"

"On what?"

"Not thinking people suck."

"I've got a few years of that to get through, darlin'. You got the time?"

"Nothing but. Especially for something that's maybe worth spending it on."

She darted off again before he could answer; it was like trying to hold a conversation with a deer. He wasn't sure what to say, anyway.

He found her hair clip sitting next to him when he put his hand down to jump off the rock.


	4. Chapter 4

_Thank you to everyone who's commented on/liked/followed this. I'm really surprised and happy at how well it's been received._

* * *

It wasn't raining, so Dean didn't bother with the park. He tried not to think too much about what that said about why he went there at all.

Downtown sounded good on a dry night. Lights, noise, maybe a couple of beers. Silence and solitude never helped him all that much. Noise and solitude did sometimes, though. So would picking up a little something to take home, since Clarisse was obviously a bigger fan of words than of action even when she _was_ around.

He was still interested, that was the thing. That didn't usually happen with him. When it was really _no_ and not just playing coy, he went looking elsewhere. Why waste time, especially when it wasn't that hard to find _yes_ waiting around someplace?

_She isn't a waste of time, that's why. And she doesn't think I am. She said so._ Nobody had ever talked to him the way she did, that was for sure. He liked the way her mind bounced from idea to idea. He just couldn't stop wondering how that translated into bed.

Thursday wasn't the best night for a bar hop; most of them were dead as dogshit. He looked in the windows of five before he found one that had a decent crowd. He was about to go in when he _really_ looked, and froze in his tracks, one hand on the door.

Clarisse was in the bar, perched on a stool next to some guy who was leaning in really close. She wasn't stopping him. He said something to her, and she laughed.

He wanted to go in and drag her out, back to the park where she belonged. He wanted to go in and beat the shit out of Mr. Smooth and _then_ drag her out. He wanted to go in and beat the shit out of Mr. Smooth, drag her out, and take her back to his apartment and fuck her until she couldn't walk, until she knew she couldn't just sit there and look up at some suit-wearing asshole and laugh at his jokes that way.

_Okay, whoa. When YOU know you're getting weird, you're really getting weird._ The best idea was none of the above - just go someplace else and find some chick to pick up and bang, get this stuff out his system. He turned and kept going up the street.

He was disappointed, that was the thing. Mr. Smooth looked like a stock photo of a Junior Vice-President in Charge of Corporate Bullshit and Firing People. But she had to keep herself in charcoal somehow, he supposed. _A business arrangement, right? You could almost laugh until you puke._

He didn't want that beer any more. Or any of the other stuff he'd been thinking about. He went back to the park and sat in the middle of the not-maze and willed it to rain.

It didn't.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean waited two weeks before he went back to the park. He didn't want to fight with her, and he knew that was what would happen if he went back the first week. He spent the second one trying to convince himself to be reasonable: He didn't have any claim on her, and if she'd lied about being with anyone, well, maybe she just didn't want to talk about that.

By the third week, he was almost climbing out of his skin and starting to get angry again, waiting for rain. He wanted to see her again. He wanted her to look him in the face and tell him the truth. And just maybe why she'd be fucking a guy like that. _He doesn't understand you. He can't possibly. Either he's hung like a bull or you need money really bad._ Shit, he had money if it was that bad for her. It wasn't her fault she didn't know that, but maybe it was time for her to.

He spent Wednesday pawing through those same thoughts over and over again. On Thursday, it rained.

She wasn't at the not-maze, or on the bench. _You waited too fucking long. She decided you weren't coming back. Stupid._

He wasn't ready to give up quite yet, though. He wandered around what seemed like likely places for her to be.

It took 20 minutes for him to make his way around to the smallest of the public pavilions. She was under its shelter, umbrella-free for a change. She was also flat on her back on one of the tables, drawing on a sketch pad propped on her stomach and her raised knees.

It made more sense when he got underneath the shelter with her and looked up. The roof was held up by an elaborate structure of beams and smaller supports. She was drawing that by the light of a security lamp nearby.

"Hi. I thought you gave up on me. I'm glad you didn't."

"I almost did."

She was silent for a while, drawing. "Got tired of waiting for me to give in?" There was a brittleness in her tone he hadn't heard before, even when he'd hit on her: _Watch it. If you're going there, look where you put your feet._

"If I wanted you to do that, I guess all I had to do was put on a suit."

"That _would_ be - All right, when did you see me?" She sat up.

"Couple weeks ago. I guess it's on me. I never asked what you do for a living."

"Dean, maybe you should tell me exactly what you saw."

"Armani Boy all in your space. Was he paying for his jokes to be funny, or were they really?"

"I laughed at something he said, ergo, I was whoring myself out to him. He couldn't have been my boyfriend, I guess?"

"Sure. That's even worse, but I guess he could be. Is your slick corporate fuck at least keeping you well?"

The last thing he expected was what she did: She doubled over laughing. "You don't jump to conclusions, do you? You _vault_ to them. He wasn't my boyfriend. I wasn't whoring. Well, not my ass, anyway. My talent. That's even better, huh?"

"You were _drawing_ him?"

"Sketching. And if I was laughing at his stupid jokes, I must have just finished. Doesn't do me much good to get out the pencils if he doesn't buy the finished product, right? So I laugh at a few stupid jokes; and tell him no, he can't buy me a drink because I'm a recovering alcoholic; and get my $20 and run before he gets any _other_ ideas. And then I can eat for the next few days without having to break into my rent money for next month."

"_Are_ you? An alcoholic, I mean?"

"No. But that shuts about half of them down right there."

"You hate doing this, obviously. Why do it?"

"I have to live, don't I? Even rain nymphs have to eat. Sometimes I think the other would be more honest. And about half as scummy. That's just fucking, right? Instead, I'm letting them buy a little bit of who I am for twenty bucks a pop. I wish you hadn't seen that. Why did you have to go to _that_ bar, out of every one in the goddamn city?"

She was up and gone before he could tell her it didn't matter to him, not at all; that he understood about having to survive, way more than she realized; that she didn't have to be ashamed, not around him or around fucking _anybody_.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean really didn't think Clarisse would come back to the park. He tried anyway the next time he and rain were both in town at the same time. She was there, back at the pavilion and back at sketching roof supports.

He stopped as soon as he saw her and picked a flower. He wasn't sure why; one flower sure wasn't going to make it right.

It did help, though. She put down her work to take it, smiling. "Did you pick this here?"

"If there's a 24-hour flower shop in town, I've never seen it."

"That's illegal."

"Yeah. That makes it better, doesn't it? When there's a little danger in it?"

She just held the flower for a while, looking into it. "I'm sorry. I overreacted. I've got some pretty romantic ideas about the place of art in a society where artists have to pay rent, too. I don't like being reminded how unrealistic they are, I guess."

"Yeah, well...I shouldn't have said most of the shit I did, so I guess we're even."

She suspected that was as close to an apology as he ever got. "Would you be totally against letting me draw you?"

He stared at her. "Didn't we _just_ finish fighting about that?"

"I said draw, not sketch. And it's for free, so I don't have to laugh if you're not funny."

"Sounds fair. Wouldn't it be easier in daylight, though?"

"I don't think you really belong in daylight."

He wasn't sure what to make of that. Which wasn't really anything new with her. He tried to compose himself in a proper 'getting drawn' pose while she got things ready.

She looked up at him and dissolved into giggles. "You know all that drawing the fountain from memory I was doing? That's so you don't have to sit there like you have a pole up your ass."

He was tempted. Sorely. He didn't say it.

"That's it, right there. Got you." She started drawing.

He was mostly surprised by how little she had to look up. One of the times she did, she smiled and said he was allowed to talk, too.

"All right, so tell me the difference between drawing and sketching."

"About an hour." She smiled. "Sketching is _Hey, wow, that looks just like me_. Drawing is _Holy shit, that IS me_."

"So drawing is art, and sketching is...?"

"A fast 20 bucks. Since you know my dark secret, what do you do for your twenties?"

He looked taken aback by the question. "I don't think I'm going to tell you yet."

"Up to illegal things, are we?"

"Nah, it's legal. In most states. Even in North Dakota. How did you get here from there, anyway?"

_Subject changed._ "I took off a couple years ago. Just kind of wandered around. Here's where I ran out of travel money."

"Lucky you."

"It's not so bad. There are other arts people here, which is a whole lot more than I could say for back home. And I'm the only rain nymph."

"That's not lonely?"

"Sometimes. But there are some compensations. _Now_ sit still." She got up and came to sit beside him, her face inches from his.

_She's going to kiss me. Damn, I'm gonna get some on the picnic table tonight._

Instead, she stared into his eyes for a while, then started making marks on a scrap piece of paper with half a dozen blue pencils. She alternated between staring and marking for a while, then added smearing the marks around to the show.

"You have beautiful eyes, did you know that? They're going to be a challenge, though." Her tone said 'challenge' was her favorite word in the English language.

"Why?"

"Blue eyes aren't usually pure blue. They have other colors in them, to kind of anchor them. Look." She leaned in again for him to look into hers. She was right; her eyes were only a shade or two darker than his, but up close they were filled with other colors, flecks and sparks of light brown and green and darker blue.

"Mine don't?"

"No. Almost none. That makes it really hard to draw them and make them look real instead of like I took a crayon to the problem."

It took a few more minutes for her to color-test to her satisfaction. When she was done she went back to where she'd been sitting and went back to work.

_No kisses for me, I guess._ And no hot, frantic outdoor sex, either. He tried to convince himself he was surprised.

She wrote something on it when she was finished, then sandwiched the result - without letting him see it - between two more sheets from the pad. She came up with paper clips from somewhere to hold the whole thing together. She packed everything else up before she handed it to him. "See if you can tell the difference." She darted off again.

One of these nights, he was going to chase her. But not tonight.

The makeshift envelope kept the drawing dry until he got home. He opened it up, then propped it up where he could look for a while.

It was how she saw him; he got that without trying: Damp tendrils of hair curling down to frame his eyes, the beginnings of a smile. She'd put work into the eyes - blue mostly, but he would have sworn he caught a shading of green when he looked from another angle. They were the only color in it; the rest was lighter and darker hues of black charcoal.

The difference? Yeah, he got that. It wasn't photographic, but it was _Holy shit, that IS me_, all right, enough to make him a little uncomfortable. _Just how much does she see?_

It took him a while to remember that she'd written something. It was in the bottom corner, away from the drawing itself. He thought it must be a poem or a song, but he didn't recognize it.

Don't look for heroes in the morning  
Don't look for heroes in the sun  
They will come by night, right before the light  
Comin' out of nowhere on the run

_Yeah, she sees a lot._ He didn't think that ought to come as a surprise, either. _But heroes? She has some disappointment coming if she really thinks that._


	7. Chapter 7

She was waiting for him at the pavilion - not drawing anything, just waiting and watching the rain. He didn't want to think too much about how happy that made him.

She was sitting on the top of a table, her feet on the seat, leaning back on her hands and looking entirely comfortable. He thought about joining her, but he decided he ought to be able to be comfortable in his own way, too. He sat in front of her, letting her decide whether to move her feet or get them sat on. She moved them.

He felt kind of dumb sitting there with them not looking at each other that way, but she suddenly decided to make it worth the awkwardness by resting her hands on his shoulders and encouraging him with a gentle tug to lean back against her. "So, can I do this without you taking it for an invitation to grab my boobs, or what?"

He smiled, even though she couldn't see it. "Yeah. Yeah, you can do that."

"Oh, good." She brushed his hair back away from his face, playing idly with it. "How goes the not hating everybody in the world project?"

"I didn't know there was one. But right now, I can honestly say I don't hate _everybody_."

"It's a start. I'm an army of one." She gave his hair a playful tug; he willed himself to not instantly go blue-steel hard. "Unless you mean someone else, of course."

"Nope. Only you."

"Such a burden to bear, being the only one." She tugged again, smiling down at him.

He managed to not moan, but only just. _ I'll bet you'd do that while I fuck you, too._

"So when do I meet the girlfriend this is pissing off?"

"Subtle. There isn't one."

She leaned over him further, so she was looking fully down into his face. "You know, I find that _really_ hard to believe."

"If I believe you don't have somebody waiting at home, you have to believe I don't. That's how it works."

"But you _didn't_ believe me, Dean." Another tug. He clenched his teeth and took a long, deep breath.

"No, but I do now. Since we're not strangers any more. Or are we?"

"Not exactly."

"Are we not-strangers enough for you come home with me and see my lack of a girlfriend?"

"Not yet."

"Then you probably don't want to pull my hair again, darlin'."

"Oh? Only not-strangers get to do that?"

"Generally, only women I'm fucking at the time get to."

"Oops." It didn't stop her from going on fussing and playing with it, but he was fine with that.

"So how do you manage to be without someone to pull your hair on a regular basis?"

"How do _you_?"

"I don't like my hair pulled. And my body isn't half as...attention-grabbing as yours is, fella." She ran a fingertip along his left bicep. "Don't tell me they're not just tripping you and hitting the ground first all over the place."

"I do all right."

"And you _still_ hate everybody. I don't." She laughed softly. "So we can safely eliminate sexual frustration as a contributing factor, professor."

_No, not really._ "So what's the next thing you have in mind to test?"

"Mmm, I'll have to think about that."

He felt her coiling up to dart off again. _Not tonight, babe._ He grabbed her shins, keeping her still. "I don't want you to leave yet."

"Dean..."

"Take it easy. Degenerate, not rapist, remember? Could we maybe just sit here for a while?"

"Yeah."

Her hands left his hair, and he was about to grumble about it, but they settled on his shoulders, kneading gently. Professional, no, but it felt really good. "When are you going to draw me naked?"

"It would be kind of silly for me to take all my clothes off to draw, don't you think?"

He tipped his head back and shot her a look that made her laugh. "_I_ don't think so."

"Oh, naturally. Hey, I have something for you." She twisted at the waist, making him bite his lip at the rather intimate change of the press of her body against his back. He was pretty sure she didn't even notice. She handed him a folded and clipped piece of paper over his shoulder. While he was messing with the clips, she scooted out from behind him and bolted off.

_Damn it, woman._ She acted like she was watching some gauge that measured exactly when he'd turn into the Mad Rapist.

The folded paper was a cover for a half sheet inside. On it was a drawing of a flower - the one he'd given her last week, he thought - so realistic that he had to stop himself from touching it. Or smelling it. It was her way of giving him a flower, he guessed. Either way, it was his first. He tucked it back in the little folder. _She keeps this up, I'm actually going to have stuff on my walls like normal people do._


	8. Chapter 8

It was barely raining, more of a mist hanging in the air than rain at all. That didn't stop Dean from getting thoroughly soaked while he was hunting for Clarisse.

She'd left another note on the bench: _We're in a rut. Let's break out. East gate._

Naturally, he had no idea which direction was east. He headed for the closest gate, hoping it was the right one; it was a big park.

It wasn't, naturally. The second one he tried was. She was sitting outside, on a low brick wall that ran up to the gate. Which was locked. Muttering, he started to climb.

When he jumped down the last couple of feet on the other side, he saw a look of thorough amusement on her face. "Enjoy that, did you?"

"Oh, immensely. You have a cute butt, by the way."

"Uh, thanks. So do you. Why is it cute when you say that and when I say it, it sounds like I'm waving candy around and pointing at a white van?"

She burst into giggles. "The human condition. Think about all the songs that are hot when women sing them and creepy when men do."

He sat down beside her. "Like?"

She positively beamed. It was cute. When she started swaying and...cooing her example, it was something else entirely. "I don't want anybody else, when I think about you, I touch myself."

He was fine until his brain insisted on delivering up an image of Springsteen singing it. He laughed so hard he almost went backwards off the wall. "Yeah, your point."

"You have a nice laugh. You should let it out to run more often."

"It needs reasons."

She shut her drawing pad with a huff of annoyance and packed it away. "No use tonight; the paper's getting all damp, even with the umbrella. Let's walk."

They were both soaked enough for the umbrella to be a big waste of time. She folded it up and stuck it in a pocket on the outside of the bag. He picked it up and swung it up on his shoulder. He hoped that looked polite and gentlemanly; he was thinking more that she wouldn't run off without it.

The look she gave him said she knew exactly what the score was, but she didn't protest.

She looked down as they walked. He eventually realized what she was doing: A few places were still open at this hour, and others left their signs burning all night. She was looking at the colors they threw on the wet pavement. "Your next project?"

"I've tried before, more than once. I can get the colors, but not the light. If I can do that, I'll really have done something."

Inevitably, she almost walked into a trash can. He grabbed her hand and pulled her far enough toward him so she'd go around it. She looked thoroughly embarrassed. But she didn't try to take her hand back, even when he laced her fingers into his. _Now I've got you. No way you're strong enough to run off dragging my ass down the street._

She didn't fight him over that, either. It was easy to forget with her not trying to run off that this was restraint. She went shy on him for a while, but she started talking again before long. He was mostly happy to listen; she kind of got on a horse and rode off in every direction at once, but it was as cool as it was weird.

"Where do you go when you run away from me?"

"It's not very effective running away if you know where to look for me, is it?" She squeezed his hand gently. "Don't, okay? Let it go."

He did, even though he didn't want to. The other little twinges had been quiet, brief, but this one was louder: _You're in some kind of trouble._

She asked three times before he decided he really would be holding her against her will after that; he handed her her bag and watched her dart off, wondering seriously for the first time where and to who - and what her welcome would be like when she got there.


	9. Chapter 9

Dean thought about it; he thought all week. The question was simple enough, really: Did he want to get messed in with some chick's problems?

The answer wasn't so simple, partly because Clarisse wasn't just some chick. If she were, he'd have gone on his way the first time she said no. He wanted to help if he could. And that was the real problem: He couldn't help because she wouldn't tell him what was wrong. So it was up to him to find out.

He thought a lot about something Roman had said back when they were first putting the Shield together, when Dean wasn't ready to trust either of them, any more than he trusted anyone, and Seth had been absolutely plain about _his_ doubts if Dean could be trusted: _If you want someone to trust you, you have to trust them, too. Maybe you have to do it first, even._

And look where that had gotten him, right? But it was probably still true. And he did trust her, he guessed; it was easy when she didn't seem to want anything from him. _Including at least one thing I'd really like to be giving her._ But that wasn't the point, was it? Not right now, anyway. The point was, how did he _show_ her he trusted her, so maybe she could get started on giving it back?

It was obvious, wasn't it, and without much thought? She'd really only ever asked him one thing about his life. And he'd refused to answer. He still didn't want to, but it was something to think about. He had another idea to try first.

It didn't rain all week. He finally took an overcast sky as the best he was going to get.

She was sitting by the gate again, watching cars go by as far as he could tell. "What, no project?"

She smiled up at him. "No rain, no wet streets, no light to draw. It's going to rain, though, later. Can you smell it?"

He could, actually, that weirdly metallic smell that was strong enough to overpower street and exhaust fumes. "If it's not raining, we can't be outside, right? Let's go in someplace."

She shook her head, eyes suddenly wary.

"Come on, someplace public. Lights, people, all that. How about breakfast? I'm hungry."

He thought for a second, just that, he saw yes in her eyes. "I can't."

"Why not? I know you eat; you said so."

"I can't, not tonight. I have something I need to do."

"Well, let's go do it, and then we can go."

"You can't come with me."

He bit his tongue until it was under control. "Fine. You go do what you have to do, then meet me someplace. Over there." He pointed at an all-night diner halfway up the block. He was waiting so hard for _no_ that it took him a few seconds to understand her _yes_. "Yeah? Really?"

She nodded. "It's going to take me about half an hour, maybe a little longer."

"But you'll come? You won't leave me sitting in there like a stood-up asshole?"

"No. I promise."

"All right. I'll be waiting, don't forget that."

She waited until he turned and started walking away before she moved. He turned just in time to see which way she went. _Fuck it, I'm done with all the mystery bullshit._ He followed her, keeping far enough back for the dark to hide him.

Four blocks, and she went into a 24-hour drugstore. _Make me a happy man. Buy rubbers. A BIG box._ He stayed an aisle away from her, moving as quietly as he could without making a big I'M SNEAKING! spectacle of himself.

She went to the front counter. "Hey, Janie. Got the goods?"

"Yeah." The woman behind the counter smiled like she was happy to see Clarisse. "How's she doing?"

"About the same. Which is pretty good, considering how she _was_." She dug money out of her pockets, dumping two dollars and a couple of handfuls of change on the counter. The two of them counted it, and Clarisse muttered a heartfelt _Oh, shit._

"Don't worry, I've got the rest. You just get it home to her." The clerk took a prescription bag out from under the counter and handed it to her.

"Thanks, Janie. We'll cover you next time, promise."

"Don't worry about it. See you in a couple of weeks."

Clarisse started hurrying more when she left the store. It made her a little harder to follow, but her louder footfalls made it easier for Dean to not be heard. Six blocks, and she abruptly turned up an alley.

He knew what he was seeing when he peeked around the corner and saw her slip between some carefully-placed sheets of plywood. He'd seen it before. He waited for a slow count of ten, then went after her. He expected the seeming dead end he hit about ten feet in. There'd be a sharp turn to help hide any light coming from inside the squat.

He made the turn carefully so he wouldn't burst into an open room like the world's worst spy. He couldn't see, but he could hear. Even over the hiss of the rain when it started, he could hear just fine.


	10. Chapter 10

"Your date over already?" It was a woman's voice; she sounded older, and had a Southern accent.

"_Stop_ it. And no. I'm going back."

"You bring him back with you?"

"_No_."

"Then who's that peeping at us? Come on out, boy. There's a big ol' space between those boards, and you're standing right next to it."

There was. _Well, shit._ He stepped into the room. Clarisse's eyes went enormous, and she turned and bolted for the back of the building. Dean started after her.

"Best you let her get herself together." The woman, who looked about 60, gave him a thorough looking-over.

"I'm not going to hurt you."

"Oh, I know _that_. You're the date. She drew us a picture of you. This wasn't probably your smartest move, boy."

"She's ashamed."

"Yeah, still. It's taking her a while to get past it."

"She doesn't have to be. Not with me."

She gave him another of those assessing looks. "You've done some sidewalk time, haven't you?"

"Yeah, a while back. How'd you know?"

"You're lacking that horrified look people usually get. Not to mention that 'Here comes a 20-minute lecture about Social Services' look." She smiled at him. "Stop looking back there like you're gonna make a run for it. Might as well sit yourself down. She'll come back. She likes you. Gonna be pissed as a bear, though."

He found a pile of something that looked like it might hold him and sat down. The woman pulled a bottle out of the prescription bag and downed two of the pills with water from a gallon bottle next to her. "Ecch. Nasty things. They're working, though, so I oughta not complain, I guess. What's your name? I'll bet it ain't Boy."

He smiled; he couldn't help it. "Dean."

"Yeah, that's a lot better than Boy. I'm Bernadette, Bernie to my many thousands of admirers. So now you can go on and tell me what you want with my favorite girl."

_Lots of things. And I bet you know what most of them are already._ "I like her, too. I've never met anyone quite like her."

"Probably never will again, either. But you know you set yourself back a long way tonight, don't you?"

Dean nodded. "I thought she was in trouble. You know, some guy smacking her around or something."

"And you were gonna come smack _him_ around a little just to even things out?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"You look like you could do it, too. She's not in any trouble like that. She's gonna fight you now, though. Tooth and nail."

He nodded. "I figured. Starting over all the way from the beginning, right?"

"Probably further than that." She looked toward the back of the building. "Mike! You go get Clarisse, tell her to come out here with her company like she's got manners."

A kid who couldn't have been any more than a teenager stuck his head out of one of the plywood-divided "rooms." "Okay, where did she - Holy _shit_!"

_Oh, just what I needed right now._ "Listen, she doesn't know. I'd appreciate if you'd keep it that way until I can tell her."

"Yeah, man, sure. I figured she didn't know. I mean, she would of said _something_."

Bernie was looking at him with new interest. "And what's _this_ all about? You a rock star out slumming or something? He damn near fainted."

"_Nobody_ wants to hear me sing. And is it slumming if that's where everyone thinks you belong to start with?"

"Pretty damn good at not answering what you're asked, aren't you?"

"Years of practice." He looked up to find Clarisse watching him from across the room. "Hey. So...you're It?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes. Each time he tried - teasingly at first, then seriously - she found something compelling to look at on the floor.

"Come on, Clarisse, don't do this shit. Don't be like this. I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

"Which I'm not, right?" She still wouldn't look at him.

"Maybe not all the way, but I was imagining a lot worse, you know? You wouldn't believe what I can imagine."

"Then you can leave in good conscience."

"What in hell's wrong with you, girl?" Bernie had apparently had enough. "You stop acting like he hit you or something. All he wanted was to help."

"Sure, guys have wanted to _help_ me before. Lots of times."

"You've been around this one what, two months now? And just now you're thinking he's that way? Bull. You stop this." Her eyes flicked back to Dean. "You two were going to do something?"

"Yeah. I didn't get my breakfast yet. I get grumpy when I don't get my breakfast."

"You're too damn big to have being grumpy in here. You wait outside now, let me talk to our girl here a little bit."

He had the feeling he was going to find himself waiting out there while Clarisse took off out a back door somewhere, but she came out after five minutes or so. She still didn't seem to want to look him in the face. "If you still want to go, let's go."

"All that enthusiasm. It'll go right to my head, and then where will we be?"

She just stood there, still not looking at him.

_All right, so humor's not working._ "I still want to. Why wouldn't I?"

She shrugged. Or flinched. He couldn't really tell the difference. "Lots of reasons, probably."

"I can't think of any. Come on."

She did - and she managed not to snatch her hand away when he took it, barely - but she looked as unhappy as he could imagine was possible.


	11. Chapter 11

"What's wrong with her?" Dean thought if Clarisse would talk about anything at all right now, it would be something that wasn't her. And hell, he wanted to know, too.

"Bernie?"

"Yeah. The pills..."

"She caught bacterial pneumonia from somewhere last month. They're antibiotics. She's getting better, but it's been so _slow_."

"You know, if you need help with that, the medicine..."

"We don't."

"You were short tonight."

She gave him a look he couldn't read and really didn't want to. "You were there, too?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus. It's a good thing you weren't a mugger. We had a tight week, that's all. They happen. We pool money for stuff like that; it's usually enough."

She seemed perfectly happy to walk in silence. Dean let it go for now. He thought maybe cornering her in a booth would be a good start to the talk they needed to have.

She didn't make that easy, either, but he managed it. She looked at him like she knew exactly what he was up to, but she finally slid into the booth first. _First battle to me._ Or maybe second. He thought it probably hadn't been easy, even for Bernie, to talk her into this at all.

The next battle was ordering. She clearly intended to pay for her own food; he could tell by what she ordered. "Nope."

"Nope, what?"

"I invited, I pay. I meant to before I followed you, too. So fucking _eat_ something."

She still didn't order much. He caved and dealt with it the other way: He ordered everything on the menu that could have been described there as 'a shitload of food.' _Call this one a draw._

Or maybe not. When the food started coming, she just stared at him. When it finished coming - including three plates the waitress had to put on the table behind him - she was laughing, her face in her hands.

"There. Now you have to help or I'll explode."

"No way. I'm gonna watch you eat _all_ this."

She didn't. He could see her trying to be polite about it, but she ate enough to put two people her size under the table.

He waited until she'd slowed to picking at things. "Why didn't you just tell me?"

"Why would I? I hate that pity look, I just _hate_ it."

"When did you see that on me? I don't really do pity. And not about that. Darlin', I've _been_ there."

He was expecting the _Oh, bullshit_ look he got. He was ready for it. He didn't talk about it very often, but when he did, he usually found himself telling all of it. That was what he told her. It took a while.

"All right, I believe you. That still doesn't mean I wanted you to know."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of. Not with anybody, and sure as hell not with me."

"Bernie keeps saying that. And she isn't. But she didn't fuck up to get herself where she is. Neither did you. I did."

"The ex who wants to be a butcher when he grows up?"

"Partly, yeah. But I was already broke and stranded when he came along. I figured I was going to hit the big city and live by my wits. Turns out I don't have any."

He thought that was about as untrue as could be, but it wouldn't do much good to say so. "Why here? There are bigger cities closer to where you came from." He tried to draw a map in his head. "Minneapolis, right?"

"I got there in January. I ran like hell by the middle of February. There's cold, and there's _that_. It was like home with traffic jams."

That pretty much covered his memories of Minneapolis, too. "How long have you been here?"

"Four years."

_Holy shit._ "All there?"

"All but about six months with butcher boy, yeah. Bernie found me crying on a corner like an idiot."

"She kind of glues the thing together there, doesn't she?"

"Completely. The one thing all of us have in common is how fucked we'd be without her. When she got sick...that's the most scared I've been in a long time."

"How many of you are there?"

"Eight right now. Four of us who've been there a long time. The rest kind of come and go. Can we talk about _anything_ else now?"

_Okay, so this is going to take some work._ "Your turn to choose, I guess."

"Did you punch Mike in the face?"

"Nope. Why?"

"Because he looked like somebody did when he came looking for me."

"Uh, yeah. How about I explain that next week? I think it's going to be easier to show you than tell you."

"All right."

Which meant she still planned to be around next week. It was a start.

They packed up all the leftovers, including two plates neither of them had been able to touch. He thought she might argue about bringing it all back, but she didn't. He figured it was because it was for someone else. They walked back loaded down with go-plates to put at Bernie's feet. _Hell with the rest of 'em, she gets first choice._

Clarisse walked back outside with him, which he wasn't exactly expecting. She bounced up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek, which he _really_ wasn't expecting. She stepped back before he even had the chance to decide if he wanted to do something about it. "Thanks for putting up with me being an asshole."

"You'll get to pay that back, or so everybody tells me."

She just smiled and slipped back inside.


	12. Chapter 12

She wasn't at the gate.

_No, don't you fucking do this. Don't._

He was getting ready to make his way back to the squat - and sit there all night if he had to - when he found the note wedged way back in the bars of the fence. It wasn't raining much tonight, but it was pretty windy, so apparently she'd decided to really jam it in the shrubbery to keep it in place.

_I have stood here before inside the pouring rain  
With the world turning circles running 'round my brain_

"What the...?"

She was trying to tell him something, he was sure of that. One thing would be _Put in a little effort if you really still want to see me._

It took him about five minutes of sitting and thinking hard about it. He smiled then, the one he almost never let people see. He knew where she was. _If she's trying to tell me that's all the further back I knocked us, I didn't do so bad._

She was sitting on the rock at the center of the not-maze, just waiting. He didn't even see the bag she carried her drawing gear in.

"What's this? Figured I needed an IQ test?"

"It gave you a chance to back out on explaining. 'Oops, such a shame, couldn't find you.'. You didn't take it."

"I said I'd be here, didn't I? But we've gotta go someplace dry. So I'm buying breakfast again."

That wary look was back in an instant.

_Shit, I'm not going to be able to do anything for a while she won't take as offering charity. Everything's going to be pulling teeth._ "Seriously." He patted the bag he had slung over _his_ shoulder for a change. "What's in here can't get wet."

"Let's go to the pavilion, then."

He could have fought her about it - he wanted to - but he was worried enough about how she was going to take this as it was.

He pulled a laptop out of the bag. "So much for scamming some free wifi from somebody." He'd come prepared for that, too. "But not to worry: I never leave home without my dongle."

He heard her muttered _Oh, dear God_ from behind the lip she was biting. That was good; he thought it was likely to be the last thing she found funny for a while. He turned the laptop toward her and hit play.

He'd started out trying to pick things that wouldn't make her think he was entirely out of his fucking mind. There weren't enough - not even close. She was just going to have to jump in all the way over her head.

Her reaction at first was just plain cute: A pure _what the fuck?_ expression and tennis-matching between the screen and his face. It didn't last nearly long enough to suit him. She picked up on things even before he'd thought she would, though.

"That's them, isn't it?"

"Yeah. My friends. My brothers."

It looked like that to her, just like that. Right up until the smaller one picked up the chair. It made her want to cry, and she wasn't even sure why it would. "_Why?_"

"Greed, babe. He sold us out. Nothing deeper than that."

"And him?" She tapped the screen briefly. "Roman, right?"

He nodded. "I don't even know any more. It's like he doesn't even _care_ what Seth did."

"You do."

"Oh, yeah."

She went silent again as the aftermath played out. Up to that point, Dean had come across as a little...odd, but that wasn't exactly a huge shock, was it? What she saw after that wasn't odd. It was like someone else entirely had climbed into his skin. Someone terrifying. And she'd been there once before, hadn't she? _When do YOU decide hitting me is the quickest way to shut me up?_

She lunged, and almost tumbled head-first off the table. _I'm not safe any more. He knows where I live, he can just go there any time he wants, and I'm not safe there now._ But where else was she going to go? Somewhere away from him for now, until she could go back for her things and get the hell away...

His hand clamped down on her wrist. "No. Not this time. Now you know why I didn't want to tell you, but I did anyway. You have something to say to me now, you say it."

She stayed perfectly still. He had to let go sooner or later.

"Look at me, Clarisse."

She shook her head, her hair hiding her face from him entirely.

"Yes. For fucksake, I'm the same guy I was half an hour ago. Including every bit of that; it didn't all just start existing because you saw it. It's _been_ there. Have I ever done _anything_ to hurt you?"

She shook her head again.

"How does you knowing change that?"

She still wouldn't look at him. He cupped his hand around the back of her neck, seriously considering making her look up. But not yet; not unless she made him do it. She shuddered, but didn't try to break away again.

"Is this it? If you want me to leave you alone, I will. But you have to tell me to go away."

She shook her head, so slightly and quickly that he wouldn't have known it if he hadn't felt the movement under his hand.

"All right, then. Look at me."

She did. She looked perfectly calm, which he knew was total bullshit.

"So now you're going to sit here and wait for me to haul off and belt you one. Or pull out a knife, probably. Right?"

She didn't answer. He didn't really expect her to.

"Yeah, well, surprise." Before he could think about it very much and convince himself it was a bad idea, he let go of her wrist so he could use both hands to tilt her head back and kiss her. She froze. Just when he was sure it was the biggest mistake he could have made, she unfroze. Then she started kissing him back.

He broke it off slowly, moving as gently as he could. He nodded toward the laptop. "How about you pack that up while I watch you not run away."

She did. He shouldered the bag and took her hand. She let him help her down from the table, still with that _Not home now, leave a message_ look in her eyes. He started walking; she was pretty much stuck going along.

She didn't say anything for six blocks. When she did, he almost didn't hear it. "Where are we going?"

"You know."

She nodded. She didn't say another word, even while he was unlocking the door of his apartment.


	13. Chapter 13

Dean hadn't really thought out what he was doing beyond _If I let her run tonight, I'll never see her again_.

For him, there wasn't much thinking to be done, really. He wanted her. He had the night they met, and none of what had followed had eased that desire at all; if anything, a lot of it had just made the desire stronger. He _knew_ they'd be good. And damn, he was at the end of his patience. Getting the edge taken off somewhere else had worked for a while, but not lately. Sometime during the past few months, wanting sex from her had turned into wanting sex from _her_. And now here she was, and she knew what the endgame was; she wasn't stupid. And she wasn't trying to run away for a change.

He wasn't stupid, either; none of that meant she actually wanted it. It meant she might give him some because _he_ wanted it, but that wasn't the same thing. Especially not if she did it because she was afraid of him.

In spite of it all, he couldn't resist kissing her again. She'd _liked_ it, dammit.

She seemed to like it the second time around, too. At least well enough to start tugging on his hair again, using it to pull him back to her when he tried to break away and give her a little space.

"What did I tell you about that?"

"Exactly when I'm allowed to do it." It was the first time in about an hour that she'd met his gaze squarely and without a bullshit 'calm' look stuck in between them.

"You want it, baby?"

She nodded. "You say you're the man I've been believing you are all along? Prove it. Show me."

That wasn't exactly what he'd said, but damn, it was close enough. And he could show her either way. This time when he took her hand, she took his right back. He still couldn't read her eyes as he led her to his bedroom, but she didn't hesitate.

"You're not afraid?"

"If you hurt me...it won't be the first time. And I'll know, won't I? Either way, I'll know. You'll show me what you're about." She pressed up against him, fingers slipping into his hair again as she stretched up to kiss him.

_God DAMN it._ "Look, if you want...Last chance, all right? I'll sleep on the couch."

"If this is a gesture, thank you. Now stop gesturing and do me."

He'd never been one to mess around too much with psychodrama; get her ready and get it in deep was more to his liking. He preferred to depend on stamina over playing 'Lord of the Manor and Virgin Servant Girl' or whatever. Nobody ever seemed to complain about stamina.

Clarisse didn't, either. He made it a point to go slow and easy with her; his math said she'd been without for three and a half years, and the six months before that probably weren't anything to sing about, either. He was going to make damn sure she liked it; the idea was definitely for her to want to come back for more.

The only time she hesitated was when he started to take her shirt off. She clutched at the hem for a few seconds, then took a deep, wavering breath and let her hands fall again.

_What must it be like, to be an artist and carry a mark like that around all the time?_ It wasn't as bad as she obviously thought it was, but there was no missing it.

_So don't miss it. And don't let her pretend you are._ He kissed and gently bit his way down to where the beginning of the part of the scar he could see was, and traced his way back up with the tip of his tongue.

She didn't feel it until his tongue strayed onto unmarred skin. She hissed and just missed putting one of his eyes out trying to push his face away. "_No_, Dean. Don't."

"Shh. He's long gone, darlin'. He left this for me to find, that's all." He went back to what he was doing, picking up where he left off along her ribs. The scar tapered off on the underside of her right breast. He kept going.

When he finally slid into her, when he couldn't stand not doing it for another second, she dug her fingers into his shoulders for a few seconds with a soft, urgent sound. He knew it was going to be all right when she went from digging to pulling, trying to bring him all the way into her. More than all right.

He'd been braced for her to just lay there and be afraid, but once the wave caught her, she rode it hard. It was like watching her rediscover a place she'd been away from for a long time, and he found himself concentrating on that as much as on how good she felt around him and dancing under him.

She was gone when he woke up. He wasn't really surprised. What _was_ surprising was that he'd slept soundly enough for her to sit there for a while and draw him before she left - and to dig up a pencil and paper from somewhere.

She'd drawn him that way, too - sleeping, a small smile on his lips, all the usual tics and tensions around his eyes and mouth smoothed away.

_If this is how she sees me, I did it right, I guess. She'll come back._


	14. Chapter 14

It didn't rain all next week. Dean went to the park every night he was home, but he didn't stay long; he knew Clarisse wouldn't be there. It wasn't how things worked between them. There were rules. It annoyed him at times like this that the rules were all of her making. It infuriated him that he followed them anyway. He could have looked for her, or gone to where she lived, but he didn't. The rules.

He knew he'd pushed those rules to their limit by following her home, and surely beyond the limits by taking her to bed. So he wasn't completely surprised when she didn't show up the next week, either, even in the pouring rain. But that meant she broke the rules, too, so it was all wide open.

She wasn't there when he threaded his way in the door, soaked to the skin. Bernie was, though, and she seemed actually kind of happy to see him.

"Can't offer you a dryer, but you can wring that shirt out and hang it up over there." She waved toward a clothesline strung out across the room. "Gonna be cold when you put it back on, but at least it won't be dripping down the back of your drawers."

There _was_ that. He found a sink in the corner by the line and peeled his shirt off. Wringing it took a while; he hadn't realized how utterly soaked he'd gotten. He draped it over the line and turned to find Bernie watching him with a big grin on her face.

"Damn. All right, then. Mike told me why he tried to fall all out when he saw you. Yeah, I can see that."

"Clarisse isn't here, is she?"

"She'll be back soon. Don't think she's expecting you, though."

"Yeah, I'll bet."

"You've got to be patient with her, sugar. You got her all jumbled up. Couldn't have waited just a little longer?"

"I don't think it was that. I told her why Mike there was all freaked out. She's...scared I'm going to just start beating the hell out of her now, I guess."

"Are you?"

"Nope. I don't hit girls."

"Well, that's fine, then. But you better know she thinks you will. Probably she thinks every man will. Even poor Mike, and he thinks the sun rises and sets on her."

"Best I can do is think it rains on her. She never lets me _see_ anything else."

Bernie laughed. "She's got her own way of doing things. I'm thinking you do, too. Just take a little time with her. If you're looking for more than a piece of lay, that is."

"I wasn't looking for _anything_. I was just going for a walk, you know?"

"Sure, and she was just drawing like she does most nights, not looking for you, either."

"She made sure I knew it, too."

"You know how many men assume a girl in her place is gonna give it up for some grocery money? You let her decide what goes where and when, see if it doesn't work out. She does like you, you know. She doesn't go to much trouble to be around people, usually."

"She went to trouble not to be tonight."

"She'll be back, I told you." She gave him a stern look. "You just keep things straight with her. Tell her the truth, whatever it is, and keep telling it. I already told her about doing that with you, too. I'm pretty sure she got the message."

"I got it." Clarisse was standing in the doorway. She must have had an umbrella; she wasn't dry exactly, but she was far from drenched. "Hi, Dean."

"Hi. Seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously. You'd prefer goodbye?"

"I'd prefer a kiss, not you standing over there cringing like I'm gonna give you a disease. Unless you decided you don't like getting kissed after all."

Clarisse glanced at Bernie, who laughed. "_I'd_ kiss him if he wanted me to, honey. It's up to you, though."

She tried to make it a little peck on the cheek. He wasn't having that, no way. "You come over here and kiss me, you _kiss_ me, not this bullshit." He pulled her up tight against him, smiling against her mouth as he kissed her right and felt her hands slide over his back and shoulders. _Still like it, don't you, darlin'?_ "You come on with me."

"We need to talk, Dean."

"That's not what I need to do, but we can start there. But only if it's over breakfast."

"Blackmail."

"Who has to be blackmailed to eat pancakes?" He looked at Bernie over her shoulder. "If we bring back a shitload of pancakes, do I have to blackmail you to eat them?"

"Hell, no. You bring back extra syrup, too, just see what I do."

"See that? We have to bring back pancakes. And syrup."

The put-upon look Clarisse shot between him and Bernie made Dean have to bite back a laugh. But she went with him; that was what mattered.


	15. Chapter 15

Clarisse didn't say much on the walk to the diner; she just smiled and picked up her umbrella from outside the door on their way by. He took it from her; it was easier for him to hold it over them both, given how much taller he was. He smiled, thinking about a song he'd heard - some station, some town, looking for something on the radio to take him though a four-hour drive alone - that had left him nearly having to pull over for laughing.

_Do I have to tell the story_  
_Of a thousand rainy days since we first met?_  
_It's a big enough umbrella_  
_But it's always me that ends up getting wet_

She was distracted. She didn't notice the smile - and she seemed never to miss those - and she ordered a plate full of mostly foods she didn't like because she gave the waitress a vague _yes_ to whatever the first option was. He knew from their first time here that she wouldn't eat most of what she'd just ordered, so he ordered things she _would_ eat to swap out.

And then he braced himself for what he knew was coming: The Talk.

She finally faced him squarely, never mind how nervous she still was. "If I'm way out of line, you just tell me to shut the hell up, okay? You need to talk to Roman."

That wasn't exactly what he was braced for. He almost slid out the bottom of the booth. "_What?_"

"I really think you're blaming him for something he's not doing, Dean. _Talk_ to him. Please?" _You're so miserable all alone, and you don't even know that's why._

"This...isn't what I thought you wanted to talk about."

"I know. Will you? Please?"

"You were all nervous to ask me that?"

"I know it's really none of my business."

"You could have at least asked me to make up with Seth for all you put yourself through to do it."

"Him? Kick _his_ ass."

He leaned up against the rain-running window and laughed until he was shaking. She could do that to him out of the blue like this, and it was pretty great, wasn't it? "I think you just want Roman hanging around."

"Well...part of my nervous system _does_ melt every time you hug him."

"And where have you been witnessing that?"

"A friend with internet. She's doing the pee-pee dance wondering why I suddenly want to watch wrestling." A sudden flicker of a grin danced over her face. "She has the hots for you, by the way."

"So I get to watch you hug her? You know, just to make it all even."

She suddenly went silent again. He wondered for a second if this was all an ass-sideways way of telling him she had a girlfriend. _Now, THERE would be proof there's a God._

"I guess I should just say it so it's said and over with. Since you're waiting for it anyway. What you do out there, when you're gone, that's your business, Dean. I'm not going to get weird about it just because we got it on once. Or even if we keep doing it. I know what this is. And what it isn't."

"Oh, you do, do you? You're real sure about that?"

"Yes. I know guys never believe it when girls say that. And probably they shouldn't, usually. But I'd rather keep what we've got than lose it for thinking it's something it's not."

They both went silent without thinking about it when the waitress brought their food. Clarisse still didn't seem to notice what she'd ordered; Dean swapped food around. "So you've decided that, too. What this is."

"Yes. Last week was probably a good thing. I...needed some time."

"And you decided all this about us without asking me what I think it is."

"I don't need to know what anyone else thinks to know what I think."

"Or to tell me what I think? Cause you sure just did."

"All right, then tell me."

"I don't _know_. I'm bad at this stuff. But it's...something. If you think you're just a convenient piece of ass to me, you're forgetting how goddamn inconvenient you've _been_ for the past three months."

The guy at the table next to them dropped most of a cup of coffee on the floor. Clarisse slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from howling laughter. Yeah, that was better. She picked up a piece of bacon off her plate and pondered it. "Did I order this?"

"No, I did. You ordered the sausage."

"Blech."

"That's what I thought."

She figured it out. The smile he got for it lingered for a while.

They were done, extra food packed up - including a double order of pancakes and triple syrup - and halfway back with it before he was sure he knew how to say what he wanted to say. "Can you just...hang with this for a while? Until _somebody_ figures out what the hell we're doing?"

"Yeah. I can do that."

"But you're not coming home with me tonight, are you?"

"No. Just because I haven't been convenient doesn't mean I want to start being now."

_Okay, so we've got some more work to do on her ideas about me. It's a start, though._

They piled food around a laughing Bernie, who, as promised, put some hurt on the pancakes. Clarisse pressed something into his hand, wrapped in extra sheets of paper again, as he was leaving. "Talk to him? Promise me?"

"Yeah, all right. I'll do that." If he wasn't going to get anything else tonight, he was damn well getting a kiss. She didn't balk at it this time.

When he unwrapped the drawing, all he could do for a while was stare. It was lights on black street pavement somewhere in the city. And not just the colors of the lights, either; as she'd said she was trying to do, she'd somehow gotten the light itself trapped in charcoals.

_You did it. And then you gave it to me._

He found what she'd written at the bottom a few minutes later.

_You will see light in the darkness  
You will make some sense of this  
You will see joy in this sadness  
You will find this love you miss_


	16. Chapter 16

She came to him the next time it rained, all the way to him, all the way with him, peeling away clothing, his and hers alike, as she did. He wasn't sure who fell on who, which of them pleaded or demanded first, or even whose hand guided him into her. He tasted rain in the cup of her throat where it hadn't dried yet as he filled and refilled her.

After, she lay with her head in his lap, her hair caressing and tickling him in a way that made his cock twitch even though she'd just finished putting it down for a nap.

"You talked to him, didn't you? He helped."

"Twice, even. Yeah, I talked to him. And he's wanting to know who put me up to it."

"Did you tell him a rain nymph did it?"

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's the closest he's ever come to calling the men with the white coats for me."

She smiled, but her eyes were troubled. "You're hurt. I didn't see what happened. Who did it?"

"You get one guess. Don't worry about it, I'll be fine."

"Don't tell me what to worry about." She said it absently, eyeing the bandage. He bit back a smile, sure she wasn't even aware what had come out of her mouth.

"Well, there's no reason to worry, how about that? Hazards of the job."

"Well, that's more polite, anyway." She dipped down and licked his cock, slowly, root to tip, smiling when it twitched against her tongue. "I can taste myself on you. How good you made me feel."

That did it; there was more than twitching going on now.

"The serpent awakes."

"So, are rain nymphs afraid of snakes?"

"Oh, no. Want to know a secret? Sometimes...when no one's looking...nymphs like to give snakes kisses."

"Yeah?"

"Mmm hmm."

It started as kisses, that was true. It didn't stay that for long. He knew he should be a gentleman and get her taken care of again, too. But what he should do wasn't what he wanted to do. And he didn't think she did, either. She looked happy enough doing what she was doing. He settled back and let her make them both happy.

When she was done - when they were both done - and she was nipping at his thighs in a way that was oddly companionable, he looked out at the rain spitting at the window. _I could really get used to this. Maybe even when it's not raining._

"Stay here tonight. Be here when I wake up. You know, just to mix things up a little. We can have breakfast when normal people do."

One nip, just one, turned into a kiss. "All right."


	17. Chapter 17

Dean was surprised to get the video, short though it was. He'd given Clarisse his number even though she didn't have a phone; if there were some emergency dire enough for her to call him, he figured she'd come up with a way to do it.

_You said you wanted this, right?_

The other girl was the friend with internet, he assumed. And with a phone, obviously. She was making a pretty enthusiastic spectacle of herself; Clarisse stood there being draped and hung all over, her arm around the other girl's shoulders, smiling as if she had some big secret on the whole world. He supposed technically it counted as the two of them hugging each other. And he had questions. Lots of them. But not over hangy-girl's phone.

_Yeah. Pretend you don't know what I'm going to do with this. You know, when I'm alone later._

_Pretending. SOOOOOO hard._

_Yes. How did you know?_

Roman saw Dean smiling over something on his phone, and heard giggly female noises coming from it. _Like a boss._ "So, is that your rain nymph?"

"Yeah." He started the video over and handed the phone to Roman.

"Which one? Or are you my hero? Wait, no - let me guess." He watched it again. "The quiet one. The one _not_ shaking her tits at the camera."

"Everyone else would have picked the other one."

"Everyone else doesn't know you like I do. I'm right."

"Yeah, that's her. Clarisse."

She was pretty cute, in a way that begged for the word _cute_. Roman shot a sideways glance at Dean. "This a serious thing?"

"I don't know. She's...different. And there's complications."

_She must really be something if you're calling her different._ "She married or something?"

"No."

He knew the Dean ain't-talking-about-it wall when he hit it. Screw that. This was interesting. Maybe even important. "Come on, what's the deal?"

"Buy me a beer and I'll tell you."

He ended up buying him three. _She's homeless more or less, she doesn't trust me, and I only see her when it's raining._ That was worth at least three beers. "So, is it good anyway?"

Dean smiled. "Ask me again when we've done it more than twice, but yeah, so far...it really is."

"Only twice? So you've known her what, three days?"

"Three months. Almost four."

For a few seconds, all Roman could do was stare at him. "Months? Three _months_?"

"Yeah."

"So why doesn't she trust you?" _She ought to, if you're holding it back like that._

"Why _would_ she?"

"Don't give me that, man. You know I'm not buying."

Dean gave him that _Yeah, yeah, fuck you, too_ smile he knew so well. "There's an ex. He left a scar on her...Man, I'd love fifteen minutes alone with him, just him and me and a big fuckin' knife."

_Knife? Shit._ "You mean a _scar_. A real one, not like baggage."

"Yeah. About 2/3 of the way around her body. So she's got trust issues, like they say."

"The rain thing..."

"I don't know. That's her deal. I just go out and get wet and mostly don't get anything else."

"And the homeless thing...That can't bother you, can it?"

"Nope. But I think it's part of why she doesn't trust me. You know what people assume. What guys assume."

"What she hasn't quite decided you _don't_ assume? Yeah, I can see that. Sucks for you, but it looks like you're going to have to be a little patient for a while longer."

"Why do you wanna start using language like that at me?"

Roman laughed. "I think I'd like to meet this girl. Think you could talk her into coming along one time soon?"

"Maybe. She doesn't like people very much, but I think I know where I can get a little help talking her into it. You want to do me a real favor? Sometime when she's around, hug me."

"What?"

He shrugged. "Girls are weird."


	18. Chapter 18

Dean tried. For an hour and 45 minutes, he tried. Clarisse wasn't being moved.

"I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to meet people. And I don't want you to pay for it. I've taken enough from you already, Dean. Too much."

"A couple of meals and a bed once in a while? Come on, be reasonable." He thought it might be the first time he'd ever told anyone else that. He was usually hearing it, not saying it.

"I am being reasonable. I told you there are limits. I told you why. You agreed to it, all of it. You don't _get_ to change the rules now."

"It's a couple days in chain hotel rooms. Most of them have the same three pictures on the walls. I'm not saying run off and be a kept woman here."

"What pictures?"

"An ocean with a cliff, a big field, and a weird-ass cottage with a garden. Come see for yourself."

"No, Dean. It's better this way. Trust me."

"Right after you start trusting me."

The look he gave him was...expressive. Probably because she was naked and half-pinned under him.

He got her all the way pinned. "You know this isn't what I mean."

"You think I don't have to trust you to do this?"

"I know you do. But there's other kinds of trust. I don't get some of those?"

He saw something shift in her eyes as he slipped into her. "You just concentrate on what you're getting right n- ooooh..."

He thought about getting her to change her mind this way, but he was sure enough that it wouldn't work to save himself the humiliation. Her reasons didn't make much sense to him, but she was _sure_. He liked the sleepy, pleasure-dazed look in her eyes too much to want to mess it up with arguing, anyway. She liked it; sometimes he thought she didn't _want_ to, but she did. She'd left him with scratches, and one hell of a bite mark on his shoulder once, too.

She seemed to always make for the edge of the bed after, like the middle was on fire. It made him wonder what knife-boy might have done to her in her sleep.

He grabbed his phone as soon as he was sure she was asleep. _No go, man. She won't do it._

_A woman who won't do what you tell her, huh? That I've GOT to see._

_Then you'll have to come here. She's really not into it._

_Did you ask her why?_

_Yeah. It pretty much came down to 'I don't want to.'_

_Don't push, then._

He hadn't planned to. He had a feeling she'd had enough experience with that. She was staying the night most of the time now, and without him having to insist on it all the time; he thought that was probably enough strain on her as it was.

He took a chance the first day he was home the next week. It wasn't raining, and Clarisse probably wouldn't be happy to see him turn up. He was kind of hoping she wouldn't be there; he had some other business tonight. He stopped first and loaded up on pancakes to go; he wasn't above a little bribery.

"Thought I might see you eventually. She's not here. She's been working on something she won't show me."

He was surprised at how happy he was to see Bernie. "Does she usually?"

"Mostly. She said I wouldn't understand this one." She smiled at him. "I'm thinkin' you will. She likes you a fair bit, you know."

"She's got a funny way of showing it sometimes." There was a table in one corner that looked like it had probably been pulled out of someone's trash at some point. He put the food down on it.

"Nah, bring that over here and come sit and eat with me."

Well, if she wanted to eat on the floor, more power to her.

She must have caught something in his expression. "She didn't tell you, did she? Guess I shouldn't be surprised. She never asked if she could."

Bernie flipped the blanket away from her legs. Or what there was of them. There was nothing from right above the knees down.

"No, she didn't tell me. Is it totally jerk stuff to ask what happened?"

"Nah, I'm past minding that. They got cut off by a bus. I ain't always been here, you know. I had a job. But there's not much call for a cleaning lady with no legs, is there?" Strangely, she was smiling at him. "You get it now, sugar?"

And just like that, he did. Why Clarisse wouldn't come home with him most nights. And why she was so reluctant to stay. And why she wouldn't travel with him, even for just a few days. And most of all, why she'd never explained any of it.

She flipped the blanket back in place. "It's not you, honey. It's me."

He suddenly felt like the world's biggest jackass. And never mind he didn't know. _That's what you get for thinking you're the center of the universe, asshole._

"I'm gonna have to sit her down. Remind her a little that I was like this before she got here. She's got to live her life. Am I wrong thinking you two might be gettin' on along with something if she didn't keep running off on you?"

"I think so sometimes. And then she gets that deer-in-the-headlights look and takes off on me again."

"Yeah, and that's not just about me, honey. I think she believes people are basically good, you know? But not to her. To other people, and she kind of gets to watch and wonder why she can't have that."

He wasn't sure what planet the thought landed from, but there it was: _She needs to meet Roman. She really, really does._

"You could give her a better life. I'm thinkin' maybe a _lot_ better. And you know that's part of the problem, right?"

"Yeah, as long as she thinks she has to pay for it, it is."

"You want to do that?"

"Yeah. I'm...starting to think I do. And you, too, if you're into that."

"You want me to pay for it, honey, you just let me know."

Once he got done staring, they both laughed so hard he almost dumped over a shitload of pancakes.


	19. Chapter 19

It rained the next night.

Dean thought Clarisse might not show up if she'd talked to Bernie and knew he'd been there. He also thought there was a good chance Bernie wouldn't tell her. He wasn't exactly sure how she ended up on his side, but he wasn't going to complain about it.

She was there, under the pavilion and working furiously on something. She didn't notice him even when he was close enough to touch her. He wasn't sure how to let her know he was there without scaring the hell out of her, so he waited.

She looked up after a couple of minutes; the smile she turned on him made him forget he was soaking wet. Again. "You haven't been standing there _too_ long, have you?"

"Just long enough. You looked busy. I didn't want pencils to go flying."

"I got a commission. Imagine that."

"I don't know why you're surprised. Maybe it's the start of something."

She tucked everything away. "I'm not looking that far ahead. It would be nice, though. I have something for you; don't let me forget."

"We hitting the road?"

"A little."

_A little_ turned out to be behind the pavilion. She propped her bag against the back wall, then turned and walked straight into him, slipping her arms around him inside the hoodie he'd had some insane idea would help keep him dry. She tipped her head back; he didn't need written instructions. She kissed him back like she meant business, fingers digging into his back.

"Hello to you, too."

"Now. Here."

_Whoa._ "Here? It's pouring rain."

"That doesn't do anything for you? It does for me."

"So I see." He pulled her up tight against him; she moaned softly, her fingers digging in again. This was seeming like a better idea every second. She'd never really instigated anything, let alone like this.

The grass was wet, but they were both so soaked it hardly mattered. She laughed and twisted every time he tried to get her under him, until he just let her do it her way - not that he minded that her way was on top.

The sound she made as she settled onto him slowly, hips rocking and swaying, was happy, almost celebratory. _Whatever had to give, it gave, oh fuck, it finally gave._ He reached up and closed his hands around her hips, resisting the urge to move her on him, to get her going the way he wanted.

She was slick with rain, sliding through his hands as she moved on him, water pouring down her onto him. She threw back her head and opened her mouth to the rain, wailing and gasping, calling his name over and over as she gulped mouthfuls of rainwater. He watched her until he couldn't any more, until all he could do was close his eyes and give in to how good it felt.

Trying to put wet clothes back on wet bodies wasn't easy; she laughed through it all.

"Come home with me."

"No. Not tonight."

"Clarisse, come _on_. What's it going to take?"

"Time." She reached for her bag and dug through it. "Here. You forgot, didn't you?"

He hadn't; he'd just assumed she'd already given him what she had for him. While he was fumbling with the paper-wrapped bundle, she darted off again.

Back home, he sat and stared at the drawing for a long time before he realized exactly what he was holding: A picture of a cottage in a garden. On a cliff overlooking the ocean. With a huge field of something yellow behind it. He laughed and set it by his travel bag. Roman had noticed the creepy hotel-art repetition first. Someone else would understand after all.


	20. Chapter 20

Dean was starting to think it would be another week with no rain. It was a bad week for that. "She won't come out." he told Roman. "She never does."

"I'm a special occasion, right? Let's go to her."

"She's not going to like that much."

There wasn't much choice, though. When Thursday night was dry, they went. Dean thought it would be about his luck - and serve him right, too - if she wasn't there.

And she wasn't, too. Bernie was, of course. And she reacted to Roman basically the same way every woman alive did, with her own special twist.

"Good lord, what are they feeding you boys? Well, come let me have a look at you."

Roman was good with people; Dean wasn't worried about him. Family photos were out in about five minutes.

"Oh, now look at this. She's a sweetheart. You should get your favorite picture and let Clarisse draw it. She does good with pictures. Just about everybody here's got a drawing she did from a picture they've got."

"Do you?"

"Sure." She reached into what looked like the world's oldest gym bag and took out a piece of paper. "That's my husband. He's 20 years and more gone now."

Dean wandered over for a look. He would have assumed Bernie ran the house, but there was something in the man's eyes, something Clarisse had found and caught there, that said he was probably able to at least keep pace.

"She's not here?"

"Nah, she's off sketching strangers. Doubt she was expecting you tonight, sugar." She glanced at Roman. "I _know_ she wasn't expecting you."

"Where is she?"

"You gonna behave yourself a little better this time?"

That won him an _Oh, really?_ look from Roman. "Yeah. I was stupid about it before. I know better now."

She gave them directions to the place Clarisse usually went to on weeknights. "They're smart enough to know that people who have to sit still for a while buy more drinks, so they leave her alone."

It was close enough to walk, which was hardly unexpected. "She isn't going to be very happy to see us, is she? What the hell did you do, beat the shit out of someone?"

"I wanted to, but no. I was pretty much a jerk to her about it later, though. I thought...well, I thought a lot of stuff that was wrong."

_You were jealous, you mean._ "But she forgave you."

"Yeah. Hell if I know why."

"Luck. Don't do it again. You know, like now."

She was busy in there, sketching away. It was a happy, smiling, overly-snuggly couple this time. That was okay, he guessed.

People were staring; some were getting right down to the pointing and whispering, no waiting. It caught Clarisse's attention before long, and she looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes went wide and her lips went the opposite, but she turned and got back to work.

They got a table near the bar where she was working; from what Roman could see, she was almost done. From the bizarre picture Dean had showed him, he already knew she was good. "Hey, I'm next!"

She glanced over at them; there was something resembling a smile on her face now, but it didn't seem to be making it all the way to her eyes. Yeah, she wasn't happy with this. But when she was done and had exchanged sketch for money, she walked over to them. "You must have talked to Bernie."

Roman smiled; there was no way not to. "Yeah. That's quite a lady." He put out his hand and introduced himself, since Dean apparently had left his manners out in the street. She looked like he wasn't news to her.

Dean was doing silence, he guessed. He just sat there with a look on his face that said the past few days hadn't left him overly patient - as if he ever was. She glanced over there, then picked up her pad and started drawing. She took longer over it; Roman thought he was getting the non-bar version of her work. When she handed it to him, he was sure.

"I think you guys closed up shop for me for the night. They're all too scared to come over here."

Dean glanced around and stifled a laugh. "How about we get you out of here, then?"

Roman forced himself not to turn and stare at Dean. _You really don't like seeing her doing this, do you? REALLY don't._

She just nodded and packed everything up. They both fell back and let her choose the direction they went. It was obvious pretty quickly she was heading home. Dean didn't look even slightly happy about it. They followed her in even though she didn't look like she wanted them to. Dean let her have exactly enough time to put her things down, then hauled her back outside again. Roman started to follow, hoping he could maybe stop the fight it looked like was coming. Dean wouldn't be embarrassed to start yelling with him right there, but she might be.

"Why don't we just let them have a little time to do what we both know they're gonna do? I think you're who I need to talk to, anyway."

"When did you decide that?"

"About four seconds ago, so don't get cocky."

He really doubted she'd let him do it even if he was of a mind to. "All right, what is it I needed to know four seconds ago?"

"Oh, you're up to ten now. Have a seat."

"They're going to start screaming out there any minute."

"I don't think arguing's quite what he has in mind."

_Probably not. But she might._ He sat down.


	21. Chapter 21

"Why did you go there? You _know_ how I feel about it."

"Because I haven't seen you for over a week. And I have to leave tomorrow. Roman wanted at least a look at you, too. What else was I gonna do?"

"What I asked. Do I ask that _much_?"

"No, but what you do ask is pretty serious shit, isn't it? It all keeps coming back to the same thing: _Back off. Go away. Stay away_. I'm not going to, so you might as well get used to that."

"Assuming much?"

"What, that you don't really want me to go away? I'm not assuming that. I _know_ it."

He was waiting for fury, denial, storming off. Instead she suddenly found something really interesting to look at on the wall to his left. "You're right. I don't. But you will."

"What, I don't get any say in that?"

"We can't go on like this forever, I know that. I thought maybe...if I let the universe decide when I see you, if I wasn't around every single time you thought you wanted me to be, maybe it might go on longer. You wouldn't get bored, or tired of the way things are, and go find something else so soon."

"Who says I'm going anywhere?"

"Nobody ever stays around long in this kind of life. You know that."

"Yeah, but I'm not _in_ it any more."

"I am. And now you're changing the rules."

"Yeah, I am. If we can't go on like this forever, maybe we should start going on some other way."

"I can't."

"You won't, you mean. It's not the same thing. And I'm not going to let you slip by with that this time. If you won't let this be anything else, I want to know why."

She made a lunge for the door. He stepped in between and pushed her against the wall, keeping her there with his body. "No. Not this time. You tell me."

Her eyes skated away from his again. "When I first got here, Bernie told me I might have to...face some reality. Find someone I could stand to be with and come to an understanding. I can't do that. And I don't want you to think I am. With you."

"I don't." He shook his head, eyes laughing. "If that's what you're doing, you're really bad at it."

"Dean..."

"I'm sorry, okay? It's hard to take that seriously. But as long as _you_ do, we have a problem."

"Not if you just leave it alone and we go back to how things were." She was finding things on the wall to look at again. "I liked talking to you. We don't do much of that any more."

"We can't do that under a roof?"

"We don't, do we?"

He grabbed her chin and turned her face up to his. "You make me feel like I've got to do everything in this little block of time, and now there's more to do. And you want to make it less time instead of more?" He shook his head. "No. I _am_ changing the damn rules. You be with me when I'm home, rain or no rain. What the fuck are we gonna do when it starts snowing, anyway? You can give me three days out of a week. Two, even. But _all_ of it. I wake up and you're there, I go to sleep and you're there."

"Dean, I can't."

"How about we go ask Bernie right now if you _can_ or not."

She looked up at him, wide-eyed.

"I know. She told me. Do you really think she's going to say she needs you right there, every second?"

"Of course not. She wouldn't even if it's so."

Which was true, of course, but he thought he'd just go ahead and ignore that. "She's on my side, and you fucking know it. Wanna go ask her _that_?"

"No."

"Great. Then you can start making up for the rest of this week tonight." And finally he could do what he really wanted to be doing, or part of it, anyway - getting his mouth on her skin and his hands under her clothes. "Come home with me."

"You have a guest."

"He has fingers. He can stick them in his ears."

She looked at him for a few seconds like she was seriously concerned for his sanity, then dissolved into giggles. "You want me to? Really?"

"Really. And Roman will be happy to get more than ten minutes; he did come here to meet you, you know."

She went shy all of a sudden when they were back at Dean's apartment, but Roman drew her out. He was curious.

_She knows stuff. Stuff I never even heard of_, Dean had told him. Once she got going, he saw exactly what Dean was talking about. Japanese tea ceremonies, daisies, steam engines, 60s horror movies...she bounced merrily from one to the next, somehow connecting all of it into one huge framework. Roman was delighted by the quirkiness of it all, and he could see what hooked Dean so hard even through months of no sex: She was as weird as he was, in her own way. It might not seem obvious to most people, but they were kind of alike in a twisty sort of way.

Whether Dean recognized that or not, there was no mistaking the look in his eyes; Roman was in for a concert tonight.

It turned out to be a quiet one, though; he thought they were trying to be. What he got was mostly impressions: Dean talking non-stop, Clarisse moaning and maybe even laughing. Bernie was right; they made each other happy. He was going to have to think about some of the other stuff she'd had to say, but about that there wasn't really any doubt.

He'd mostly dozed off when Clarisse came out of the bedroom. She saw him sit up.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you. You want a glass of water, too?"

He said yes, and was surprised when she brought two glasses back and sat down beside him. She just sipped and didn't say anything; her eyes were bright and serene. He hid a smile. _You did good work, man._

"How about I give you something to sleep on?"

"I think Dean wants me to sleep on his."

He almost choked on his water. "Have you ever thought that maybe he looks at you and sees someone who might understand him?"

"You do."

"Exactly as far as he lets me. And you know it's not the same thing."

"No, not quite." She popped up off the couch like she was fired from a cannon and disappeared into the bedroom.

_Wow. I just got my first run like a scared deer. But just look where she ran to._


	22. Chapter 22

Dean would look back later at the two months of strange peacefulness they had and bitterly wonder why it had to end. There was more than one reason to be bitter, too.

It was good in just about every way he could have hoped for. Clarisse, after a few days of clear awkwardness at being around his place all the time, settled in. Once it was clear to her that he didn't expect her to not check in on Bernie at all when they were together, things got a lot better. He was thinking that giving Bernie a phone and his number might be a pretty great idea, too. He doubted Clarisse would accept one herself, but she was a lot less bristly about anything that was for Bernie's good rather than her own.

He was surprised by how much he liked just having her there. Whatever the opposite of needy was, she was it. She was perfectly happy to read a book or watch TV with him, or to sit in a leg-tucked huddle in a chair and draw. She turned out a picture of a bird that landed on the balcony one afternoon and stayed for about ten minutes - he thought it was a sparrow, and that was the extent of his bird knowledge - that he was almost expecting to start singing. There ought to be something she could do with that, he thought, something better than sketching drunks, but he had no idea what. She showed him the commission she'd been working on, and it was about the last thing he would have guessed: A drawing of a leaf, which she'd been given in some kind of fancy storage bag, that was so detailed that he was starting to think he'd never really _seen_ a leaf before in his life.

"Who pays for something like that? I mean, it's really good, but are there people who collect leaf pictures out there?"

"There probably are. But he teaches at Xavier. It's my first real scientific drawing. I hope I'm doing the job he wants."

He thought the whole thing was probably made easier by the fact that it was raining the first time he brought her back to stay over. He still wasn't sure what that meant to her; he thought it was more than she'd said. But there was no doubt she was happy about it. She was even mostly all right now when it wasn't raining.

And the sex? Yeah, that was a bonus, all right. She never seemed as comfortable in his bed as she had that night on the grass in the middle of the park, but she pretty obviously liked it being _because we can_ instead of _because we have to while we have time_. Hell, he liked it, too. She'd started to let him see an abandonment to sensuality that drove him a little crazy. The second time she'd stayed, they'd spent three days in bed - ate there, slept there, talked there, had a massive amount of sex there. At some point late in the second day, he'd stopped being able to tell where doing one thing stopped and doing another started. They talked and ate, food got all tangled up in the sex, they started fooling around mid-conversation and somehow still kept talking. They catnapped when sleep managed to tackle them, and he woke up four times in that three days in the midst of getting a blowjob good enough to make him see spots when he came. Being fed strawberries while getting an excruciatingly slow handjob was a new experience for him, too. He was finding he liked her new experiences. A lot.

Roman teased him pretty much non-stop, especially after that week, about being suddenly very mellow about pretty much everything. He couldn't even get too mad about the teasing, so he supposed he was mellow about that, too. What he knew had changed astonished him: He still loved going to work, but all of a sudden he looked forward to getting home just as much. That hadn't been so in a long time.

Only one thing really bothered him: He'd have felt a lot better about knowing she was going to sleep at night behind a door that locked, whether he was home or not. But he knew better than to do anything about that, at least for now. She wasn't ready to go there, and he wasn't willing to mess up what they had going by trying to force the issue. He thought she'd let it happen, in time.

They didn't get the time for it to happen naturally.

He'd finally talked Bernie into letting him give her that phone. She insisted on a bare-bones burner, because, she said, things had a tendency to grow legs there sometimes. That was all right; as long as she could make a call on it, it would serve the purpose he wanted it to.

She'd never called just to pass the time, and he didn't think she ever would. So when he saw her number on the screen of his phone, he answered it in a hurry.

"Dean?"

It was Clarisse. She sounded like she was crying, or had been in the past minute or so.

"What, baby?" He barely heard himself say it the way he did.

"It's Bernie. She's gone, Dean."

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask where the hell she could possibly have gone. He stopped it before it got out. Of course she hadn't _gone_ anywhere. "What happened?"

"Her heart. They said it was bad, for a long time. She never told me. Why wouldn't she _tell_ me?" She'd held on pretty well to that point, but control slipped away from her and she started crying.

"Maybe she didn't know. Where...ah hell, where is she now?" He saw Roman look up sharply from the other side of the room.

"Still in the...the morgue. They said we have to do something soon, and I don't know what to do. I don't have that kind of money."

He heard exactly how hard the last sentence was for her to say; it sounded wrenched out. "You let them do what they do. Pick a place out of a phone book if you have to. Tell them I'll take care of things. I'll be home tomorrow."

"All right."

"One more thing. Don't sit there all alone tonight, all right? Go to my place. Spend the night there." He'd given her a key, which she'd accepted very reluctantly. She'd never used it.

"I'm not alone. Mike's here."

"Go anyway. Bring him along if you feel like you have to. But don't just sit there in that place and...I don't know, stare at stuff."

"All right."

"Baby, I'm sorry. I liked her, you know? We'll make sure everything's done nice, I promise." He hung up and just let his head drop into his hands. "Ah, _fuck_."

"She knew her heart was bad." It was the first thing Roman had said since the phone rang.

"And she didn't tell Clarisse. But she _did_ tell you?"

"Yeah. She figured Clarisse wouldn't do much but worry, and there wasn't anything she could do. Anyone else, either. They said she had maybe six months, so she got like half of that, I guess. You need help with this, man, you just say. I liked her, too. We'll send her off right."

"Thanks. But why would she tell you something like that?"

"Because she wanted to ask me something, and she knew I'd want to know why. So she got it all out there on the table to start with."

"What would she want to ask you that was _that_ serious? After what, like ten minutes?"

"If I thought you were the guy she ought to be telling Clarisse to trust."

"Did you tell her _fuck no_?"

"No, man. I didn't. It seems like you're doing your best for her. And damn, she's good for you. So she needs you now, bad, probably more than she ever will again. And you know what that means."

"Sure. She's going to push me away just as hard as she can."

Roman nodded. "Don't let her. Make sure she knows you're there for her. It might get this where I think you want it to go, if she learns to trust you all the way finally. Am I right you want that? I didn't lie to an amazing old lady before she died?"

"No, you didn't lie." Dean jumped up, pretty obviously ending that line of discussion. "Come on. We're going out."

"Having a beer in her memory?"

"Nope. Pancakes."


	23. Chapter 23

It went all right, about as all right as Dean imagined a funeral ever could. He had a very brief, low-volume, and extremely pissed-off discussion with the representative of the funeral home when it became clear that word had spread and a whole lot of homeless people were going to be turning up to pay their respects.

"There are two families holding services here..."

"Great. Can I tell them to leave if they smell?"

Sometimes being bigger than anyone else in the room was a great thing. Dark-suit Dude gave him a pained and horrified look, but he left without saying anything that was going to get him punched.

He caught himself feeling proud - not a feeling he was expecting at all - of how Clarisse stood up under it all. She'd decided at some point she needed to be a rock for everyone else, and had simply set out to do that once she'd made the decision. The whole day, she was calm, gracious, comforting...and apparently completely in denial of her own grief. The only thing she'd taken of Bernie's was the drawing of her husband, and she'd put that in the coffin. Dean watched her and waited. _When I get her home, she'll need me then._

For a while he thought he was wrong about that. She sat for almost an hour, silent, an untasted cup of coffee going cold in her hands.

"Mike's leaving tomorrow. I knew he would; there's nothing here for him now. The others...most of them didn't even stay this long. What do I do now, Dean?"

"You stay. Here, with me. There's no reason not to now."

"You want that?"

"How can you even ask that?"

She nodded as if he'd asked something that required that answer. "All right. I have a few things left there. Not much. I'll go get them."

He went with her; he expected protest, but he didn't get any. She said almost nothing the entire time - the walk there, gathering up the scattered things she'd left, the walk back. Dean was positive he'd done something wrong, but he had no idea what. He wasn't even sure how to ask; there was nothing about _What's wrong?_ that didn't sound impossibly stupid right now.

She went to bed early - _really_ early. He thought it might be a hint, but when he looked in on her, he found her curled up in a ball so tight she took up about a quarter of the bed.

He felt like it was getting to be a habit; he grabbed his phone and fired off a text.

_She's weird. You know, more than everything today should have made her._

_Weird how?_

He explained what the past few hours had been like.

_She feels cornered, man. She had a place to go, an escape hatch, right? And now it's gone._

_She doesn't have to escape from me._

_I know. But I'm not the one you have to convince, am I? Go easy, man. She just had all the slats knocked out of her life._

And for at least the second time, Dean thought. Ending up on the streets to begin with did it, too. He understood that, but he didn't think she really believed that yet. And hell, he understood _that_, too. He still believed no one who didn't go through it could really understand, but it was easy to start believing that no one who wasn't going through it right _this_ minute could understand, either.

But she wasn't any more, that was the thing. She wasn't homeless any more. She didn't believe it yet, but it was so. And in a way that was knocking slats out, too; it was one of the things she defined herself by, and it was gone now. _Man, the past couple of weeks have been a fucking nightmare for her, and you haven't done all that much about it._

It was about time to stop using _But she won't let me_ as an excuse, too. She needed him to be a man for her, or he might as well have let her leave with Mike. He'd asked her, too, more than once. But she didn't need a 15-year-old with a crush on her, and she didn't need a grown-ass man _acting_ like a moony kid, either.

He went in and sat down on the bed. Hard. With a couple of good, firm, bounces to make sure. "I know you're not sleeping. Sit up and talk to me."

She sat up with an unreadable look in her eyes. "Well, if I _was_ sleeping - "

"You weren't. Tell me what's wrong, Clarisse. Besides today. And no bullshit. Just _tell_ me."

"I'm...really handy now, huh? Convenient. You don't even have to walk out the door any more."

"If you think that, I don't know what to tell you except it's wrong. But don't you dare decide I think it, too. You don't get to put thoughts in my head."

"What _do_ you think, then?"

"That I got what I wanted, yeah. I don't have to wonder if you're safe any more when I'm not here. I don't have to go looking for you and wonder if some guy with a knife or a gun got to you this time."

"And you don't have to get soaking wet."

"That, too."

"You're pretty cute soaking wet, though. Can we do it in the shower sometimes?"

"Yeah, I think I can live with that. You gonna trust me now, darlin'? Just a little? Let me take care of you like you deserve?"

That troubled look flickered across her eyes again, but it faded and she nodded.

"I know you've got to get used to this. Hell, so do I. But we'll both do okay, watch and see."

The look of belief, maybe even of hope, in her eyes was the best thing he'd seen in days.


End file.
